


can't commit to anything but a crime

by cealesti



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Dark, Detective Harry Potter, M/M, Morally Grey Harry Potter, Murder, Obsessive Behavior, Rated For Violence, Rating May Change, Serial Killer Tom Riddle, Unhealthy Relationships, Violence, all the fun stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:33:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27286483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cealesti/pseuds/cealesti
Summary: Excitement is the word he does not dare utter, even in the privacy of his own mind. It’s wrong, he knows. These women are people, in their own right; people with fears and aspirations, with friends and families and dreams, and to have anything cut those lives short is nothing but tragic.To have anyone cut those lives short is nothing but condemnable.He doesn’t have James Potter’s laugh lines, but he does have his father’s innate flair for danger. He doesn’t have Lily Potter’s enthusiasm, but he does have her insatiable curiosity.(In every world, Harry will excel at finding the biggest spot of trouble available and sticking his nose in it.)
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Comments: 35
Kudos: 113
Collections: distractions 💬 halloween big bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goldenzingy46](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenzingy46/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [goldenzingy46](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenzingy46/pseuds/goldenzingy46) in the [Distractions_Halloween_2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Distractions_Halloween_2020) collection. 



> Prompt fill for the distractions discord server!! Rating may change depending on where this goes!! I'm aiming for 2 to 3 chapters, no more, no less.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!!

It’s the second time in as many weeks that Harry startles awake with the station’s phone blaring at an ungodly hour. There’s a crick to his neck from where his head is pillowed on his crossed arms. He’s still hunched over his desk, a mug of dark, lukewarm coffee sitting next to him like a mockery.

His progression into alertness is brisk and immediate. He’s rushing into a patrol car before he knows it. Immediately, a cup of beautiful, warm caffeine is shoved into his hands, courtesy of Ron’s night shift partner.

Colin’s face shines with an unnatural pallor as they speed under the streetlights. The dark purple ringlets under his eyes match Harry’s own.

“You look like death.” Ron says, voice terse with fake cheer. His blue eyes gaze upon the road, watchful and alert, but the look he throws at Harry on the rearview mirror is heavily burdened with concern.

Harry doesn’t deign to acknowledge it.

“Shut up.” He shoots back, tongue scalding from a too eager slip. “He’s slipping.”

Ron’s smile becomes impossibly strained.

“Is he?”

*

They’re at a local park. The lamp lights are few and far between, shining a faded, yellow light on patches of wet grass. To his right, Harry can see a cobbled path leading to what might be a small pond or a fountain, but that’s not what catches his attention.

The wind is bitingly cold when they get out of the car. It sneaks between layers of clothing, slips between strands of messy black hair. It rushes through the leaves, creaks through the branches, and swings, as gently as a caress, the hanged body.

There’s a bustling of people moving around, decidedly jarring for such a lonely, dreary night. Camera flashes go off in all directions, and the sound of chatter colours the air. Most of this number is made up of people from the labs, their steps careful and minute as they walk around with well-trained eyes that scrutinize the scene. They’ve brought with them bright, fluorescent lights, and the beams are harsh against the gloom of a moonless sky.

They cast the body in stark, ungodly detail.

It’s a woman, as they’ve come to expect. Dressed to the nines, hair perfectly coiffed. Her jewelry glitters as she sways, softly, heavily adorned with finery. She’d look normal, almost, if it weren’t for the pallor of her skin or the unnatural way her limbs dangle in the air.

Or the rope around her neck.

They’re lowering her down as Ron and Harry approach.

“Detectives.” The officer in charge greets them. Her mouth furrows into a frown. “Wish I didn’t have to see you so often.”

Harry doesn’t answer. He leaves the pleasantries to Ron more often than not. Instead, he fixes his gaze on the body, mind whirring as he categorizes and compares it to all the others they’ve found.

She’s plain, under all that pomp and circumstance. Mousy brown hair caught in loose, unassuming pigtails, and plain features. Her nails are bitten down to the quick, her lips dry and chapped. She’s average in build and height - perfectly unremarkable in every way.

She’s, perhaps, a bit younger than the others. But not by a significant enough margin.

Not when everything else echoes what they’ve come to know.

They’re laying her flat on the stretcher when Harry sees it. His breath hitches in his throat as he stares at the glittering chain around her bruised neck. His eyes follow the path of the thin, golden chain, already knowing what he’s going to find at the end of that path.

A golden locket, which he’s grown to both dread and look forward to.

Harry wets his suddenly dry lips.

“Do we have an ID?” He asks out loud, interrupting the idle chatter Ron and the first officer have worked up.

It’s Colin who answers, his quickly darting eyes facing everywhere but the body right in front of him. He clears his throat, and his voice is shaky as he says, “No ID, sir. No purse or other belongings, either. It’s just her.”

“It’s him,” Harry says, willing his voice to stay steady. “Look. The locket.”

Ron sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Of course it is. Bloody hell.”

“Was there any doubt?” The first officer asks, confused. “I dunno about you. but I don’t often find women strung up from trees. Not often enough to call it a coincidence, I’d say.”

Ron’s answering smirk is wry. “One can hope.”

Blue eyes, once again, pinned on him. Harry pretends not to notice the slowly mounting wariness.

He turns his attention back to the body, instead. The ME is examining it now, his gloved, elegant hands carrying out swift and well-trained motions. There’s something almost hypnotic about it, Harry thinks; about the ease of experience, the surrealism of the scene, and how it turns such insurmountable horror into an almost casual affair.

It’s the same ME as in the previous couple of times, Harry knows without asking. He’d recognize that grace anywhere; long, smart fingers moving with deft precision as they slowly, patiently, loosen the knot around the woman’s neck.

The locket sits, mockingly, just underneath.

The pendant is green and gaudy. A heavily stylized _S_ complemented by exaggerated snake imagery. It catches the eye, impossible to ignore or overlook in its own self-importance.

There are five identical lockets back at the station, sitting in meticulously labeled evidence bags.

*

_Medical Examiner’s Report #0402_

_Name: Myrtle Warren_

_Age: 28_

_Cause of Death: Strangulation through hanging_

_Blood type: O Rh-_

_Obs:_

_The subject exhibits no sign of struggle (bruises, lacerations, skin vestiges, etc). No markings or lacerations that might indicate constraints. There are vestiges of_ _Trichloromethane_ _(common. Chloroform) in the subject’s system. This indicates consumption in the previous 6 to 8 hours._

_No evidence of sexual assault._

_Liver temperature puts the time of death 3 to 7 hours before report (8 pm-12 am)_

_There were no neck fractures detected. It’s unlikely that the victim died by hanging, as preliminary reports might have suggested, due to this inconsistency. The pattern of the bruising indicates that it was most likely done by hand._

*

_Private notes of Det. Harry James Potter_

_Warren worked in the local library as an assistant. Lived alone, no immediate family to contact._

_No friends?_

_Her employer reports her as unstable but ultimately kind. ~~Sensitive.~~ Ran off crying in the middle of her last shift. _

_Was her Employer the last person to see her?? ~~so far~~ No apparent connection to previous kills. _

_In the process of tracing routine. House and work locations might indicate she could take the same bus route as Brown. Other than that, there are no leads or connections_ ~~_except the antiqu_~~

~~_It’s like he just picks them off the street_ ~~

_ME’s report should be coming through soon. There’s no way to know for certain until then, but I couldn’t see any signs of sexual assault or even a struggle. unless she was drugged up to high heavens, there’s no way she died hanging from that tree._

_she’d have struggled. scratched at the rope, at her neck, at her face, but there was nothing. just like the others. but her neck didn’t look bent. if it isn’t broken, there’s no way they won’t believe me._

_The whole set up is still a mystery. We’ve found no results from the locket’s imagery or signet, which is interesting. Boss is turning towards jewelry and pawn shops, but no leads so far. Seems safe to assume that the suspect is a local, but London is too big - it might take us a while._

_A psychiatric expert we contacted talks of unresolved issues with female authority figures. He’d say mothers, apparently, but the fancy dress-up is throwing him off._

~~_maybe he had a posh girlfriend and this is just a really bad break up._ ~~

~~_That would be disappointing_ ~~

  
  


*

Harry is lost in thought, staring sightlessly at the dark monitor of his desk computer, when Ron slaps a manila folder down on his desk. He’s left blinking in confusion for a second, before reaching to grab the folder.

He can feel Ron’s attentive eyes on him as he flips through papers. It’s when his hand stills on the corner of the ME’s report, eyes roving over the page avidly, that Ron sighs.

“You were right.”

He has to bite back a triumphant smile that desperately wants to escape. He hums noncommittally instead, pretending not to notice when Ron drags a hand over his rumpled red hair. Harry is left trying not to act on the jittery, anxious feeling that climbs up his limbs and lodges itself in the pit of his stomach.

Ron raps on the table with his knuckles, forcing Harry’s attention upwards. His mouth is twisted into an unhappy frown.

“How did you know she didn’t die from hanging?”

 _Intuition_ , Harry doesn’t say. He now knows that this talk of gut feelings and lucky guesses will only carry him so far.

He shrugs, instead. “By looking at the whole scene. If you go to the trouble of dressing up your murder victims, throwing a replica of a fancy locket on top of that, and then even _brushing their hair_ so that they look immaculate - why would you risk killing them by hanging? It’s messy. They’d struggle.”

“Morbid.” Ron comments. “Go on.”

“We’d have found skin vestiges on the rope or some loose strands of rope under their fingernails. Why weren't there any friction burns from trying to hold on to the rope, trying to grab at it? It’s instinct, really, to clutch at your neck, to try to loosen the pressure. If they didn’t do it, they either had to have been restrained - which would leave marks in their arms or wrists - or incapacitated. The report shows that there wasn’t nearly enough sedative to inhibit that sort of reaction. Going through that reasoning only leaves one possibility left.”

“They were dead beforehand.” A deep voice to Harry’s right concludes.

Harry startles, too focused on his own thought process to pay attention to his surroundings. He turns on his seat, his back to Ron.

Kingsley stands there, hands in his pockets as he gazes down at the files sitting on Harry’s desk. When he looks up, straight at his two youngest detectives, his expression is pensive, considering.

The look in his eyes is far too guarded for comfort.

“Keen eye, Potter.” He congratulates, tone deceptively light, and Harry answers with a terse nod.

It’s not a compliment, he knows. It’s just another log thrown into the fire that has been piling between them since the beginning of this case, fueled by too bold claims and firmer retorts, fueled by Kinglsey’s experience warring with Harry’s certainty.

 _Nice job, Potter_ , they’ve said every time one of his hunches proves correct, without entertaining any other of his theories.

 _How did you know?_ Ron asks, and Harry prattles on with whatever concrete reasoning he’s managed to come up with, on desperate bids to back up his bouts of inspiration with proof.

 _It’s what I would have done_ , he’s heard some people say, but the reasoning falls flat to him. It’s _not_ what he would have done. He doesn’t want to think about what he would have done, he doesn’t want to imagine what that emotion, that headspace looks like. How can anyone claim such a thing, when they’re so displaced from the conditions that might push them towards a decision?

 _Intuition_ is what he could say, what he did say when this whole thing started. It’s the easiest explanation, the one that cops around the world accept with a respectful nod and no further inquiries - except that he’s too _right_ , too _young_ . _Intuition_ would work on a handful of throwaway comments. Not on complex predictions that he alone seems to make.

 _How did you know?_ Ron asks, and Harry keeps tight-lipped. Keeps the answer tucked between too-large shirts and a brittle ribcage and does not allow the words to come out.

Kingsley, unaware of this inner battle, simply responds with a nod of his own. And like routine, like prophecy, those dreaded words slip through his lips in a deceptively pleasant, smooth baritone.

“Your parents would have been proud.”

*

Harry doesn’t think much about his childhood.

 _Trauma_ , it’s what the therapist he’s assigned to for a preliminary evaluation before joining the force says. A tactic born out of self-protection, a child’s brain occluding that which it cannot process.

Harry chooses not to think about it much.

He doesn’t care to think much about the Dursleys. The panic that tries to claw its way up his throat every time his thoughts so much as glance over the subject - over those first 10 years - is enough to dissuade him. Enough to convince him that those memories are better off locked into the dark crevices of his mind.

Hidden under the bed, in the darkest corners of a closet, never to see the light of day.

He remembers broken toys and a thin mattress and a thinner blanket. He remembers afternoons spent with kind Mrs. Figg down the road. He remembers walking down Wisteria Walk in the blistering heat, on some of the few slow summer days he’d been allowed to enjoy. He remembers stepping through the gates of a brand new school, Dudley free and ripe with possibility, and thinking _freedom_.

He remembers a man.

Hair dark as night and longer than he’d ever seen among the conservative suburbs of Little Winging. A silver stud in one of his ears, a worn leather jacket, and heavy boots, looking like he’d stepped out of an article on 70’s fashion.

A tremulous smile on his face. Bright, steely grey eyes looking at Harry with a sort of adoration that he’s never experienced before. The man is off-putting and displaced in the neat, proper predictability of Privet Drive. He stands with the sort of poise that Harry’s aunt could only hope to emulate, with the sort of confidence that only comes to those who have never had their place in the world challenged.

He remembers looking at this man, thin coils of dread sneaking and curling on his heart.

“I’m your godfather,” Sirius says, voice bright and hopeful and a little choked up, and Harry freezes.

In another life, Harry’s skin is blistering with the force of his wrath the first time he sets eyes on Sirius Black. He burns with righteous fury, certain of his claims. He waits, and he listens, and that inferno wilts and whispers away into ashes. He is wide-eyed innocence still, eager for someone to fill the paternal role he’s so desperately longed for.

In this life, Harry’s made of sharper stuff. There was no half-giant to knock down a door and tell him he’s special, no strange, magical happenings to set him apart from his peers, to embolden him with the strength to be brave.

In this life, Harry’s learnt to brandish his corners and still his quick tongue and to seldom place his trust on someone else.

Harry is thirteen going on fourteen, draped in clothes that are too large for his thin frame, looking out to the world through taped-together glasses. When he looks at Sirius Black, healthy and alive and preaching to the heavens how much he misses dear James and dear Lily, how he _hopes_ Harry will find a home in his ancestral house - the budding feeling in the pit of Harry’s stomach isn’t hope, or joy.

It’s resentment.

  
  


*

Tom was born at the death of the year, and the matrons of the orphanage delighted in connecting the event to all sorts of dreadful and stupid superstition.

He was born at the death of the year, and death greeted him at his very first breath, for it was when his mother took her last.

For a long time, he held nothing of hers but a story, and the name she’d chosen to bestow upon him. It’s perhaps for that reason that _Tom_ , as mundane and common as it were, always sounded to his ears like a favoured blanket. Like comfort, like a sense of belonging, like a tingling warmth that covered him from head to toe in _safety_.

How could it not, really? What else would a mother waste her dying breath on, if not on something she truly loved?

He didn’t have much. His possessions were meager at best, his social circle dwindling as the years went by, increasingly replaced by books and pen and paper. So he didn’t have much, but he had this knowledge - the certainty that his mother loved him more than she could bear, and that his father must have been just the same.

That was more than enough.

Until, of course - it wasn’t.

He leaves Little Hangleton in a haze of red - the red of the rage clouding his vision, the red of the blood pooling at his fingertips, and soaking at the hem of his pants.

He held nothing of his mother, but he’d found out that it wasn’t for lack of possessions. _A locket_ , the half-mad ramblings of his disgraced uncle said, _lost in the slums of London_ . _A ring_ , claimed by force and sitting dark and righteous on his finger.

He might have got her eye colour, he discovered. His eyes are a dark, endless brown, so he certainly didn’t get his father’s clear and crystal blue.

Well. He sort of did now.

In a jar.

*

Lily Evans was a bright, strong-willed child. Lily Evans was a brilliant, sharp-tongued young woman. Lily Potter was a ruthless lawyer.

James Potter was a bright, mischievous child. James Potter was a stupid, but kind young man. James Potter was the best detective this station ever knew.

Harry might not remember much of his childhood, but the people around him have seen fit to remind him of others’. He’s heard McGonagall wax poetically about his mother’s awe-inspiring rise to prominence, about her human rights campaign, all the cases she took pro bono to _help -_ to give a voice to those who had none. Kingsley and the older cops often trade jokes and anecdotes, reminiscing over James Potter’s glory days.

He’s heard Sirius and Remus, eyes staring sightlessly at long lost times, as they speak of a band of merry pranksters who trampled their way through their schooling with nothing short of a reign of terror.

“Remember,” Sirius says, choking on his own bark of laughter, “That one time when we put an entire jar’s worth of honey on Snivellus’ gym uniform? His face, you should have seen it. Harry -”

Remus chuckles to himself, that half amused, half remorseful look hanging around him like a chain. Harry supposes he’s meant to find it charming, amusing; he’s fifteen going on sixteen and boys his age are known to be rebellious, to act out, not to hold their punches.

But Harry grew up with clothes he couldn’t afford to get dirty, with slaps and cuffs on the head and withholding of meals anytime his backpack or books or clothes got somehow damaged, regardless of his own responsibility on the matter.

It should be obvious that they’re different, that Harry isn’t James and will never be. _You look just like your father_ , people have told him through life, and that seems to be enough. 

No one has ever bothered to ask why he chose to become a cop, to shoot right for the position of detective.

No one has ever felt like they _needed_ to, because everyone knew Lily and James Potter.

Everyone assumes they know their child.

*

The murder is never traced back to him, of course. Why would it? There are no legal ties between the Riddle family from Little Hangleton and poor, orphaned Tom Riddle from Wool’s Orphanage in London. Besides, there’s a conveniently placed madman in the shack down the road, with history and motive to wake up one day and go berserk on the rich family uphill.

So Tom goes back to his degree. To long days as a barista in a coffee shop near campus, to long nights pouring over texts, chipped mugs of coffee, tea, and cups of ramen noodles piling up around him.

And if he takes a renewed interest in antiques, if he takes a stroll down to one of the most acclaimed antique stores in London, if he trades his part-time job as a barista to pursue a menial job as a cashier to that same store, well…

That’s no one’s business but his own.

That’s how he meets Daphne.

*

“Have you added antique stores to the route?” Harry asks, pouncing on Kingsley as soon the man exits his office that morning.

Kingsley’s answer is a deep sigh, and Harry feels that jittery feeling flutter around his chest, buzzing through his legs and arms, twisting his face into an irritated sneer that he can’t quite hide.

He follows his captain, quietly, as they walk around an elaborate labyrinth of paper pile filled desks to reach the whiteboard on one of the ends of the station. There’s already a small number of them crowding around the board; Dean and Seamus lounging on their own chairs, while Neville leans timidly away. 

Ron’s standing right in front of the board, arms crossed as he fiddles with the blue marker he holds in his right hand. His eyes are attentive, the strategic mind that Harry knows sits below that mop of red hair surely putting pieces together and pulling them apart again as Ron tries to make sense of the situation.

“Boys.” Kingsley greets as he and Harry come to a stop. “What have you got?”

Dean takes the lead. “Uniforms canvassed the scene, but there are no witnesses. Cameras didn’t pick anything strange either, so that’s a dead end. As usual.”

“ME’s report came through, and so did the labs.” Seamus pipes in. “Besides that, there’s literally nothing to report. Warren’s parents passed away a couple of years ago, there is no immediate family to contact. Her emergency contact was her _boss_ , so I wouldn’t bet on her having many friends. We can barely establish a timeline for this one.”

Ron groans. “And I can’t find any connections between the lot of them. Totally different social circles, different careers, different neighborhoods. It’s a bloody ball of nothingness. It’s like this guy just picks them off the streets.”

It’s the voicing of a thought Harry himself has reached more than once. The sudden wariness in the faces around him shows that he’s not the only one.

Neville clears his throat, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Nothing’s come back from the pawnshops, either. We’re processing the client listings from every shop that gave us access, but it’ll take some time.”

A deep, pensive silence falls between them, as five out of six men turn back to look at the whiteboard, scribbled on with various colour markers, and filled with pictures and suspects. The sudden quiet makes Harry’s ears buzz. With nothing to keep his focus on, with nothing to grab his attention, with no possible crumbs of information to find, his thoughts turn, once again, inward.

He’s speaking before he’s aware of it.

“We should look at antique stores.”

The reaction is telling. Seamus and Dean trade a loaded look, while Neville simply looks away, fidgeting. Ron grimaces, guilt and reluctance and the slightest bit of frustration entering his visage.

On his end, Kingsley simply closes his eyes.

Harry is undeterred.

“It’s the only possible connection.” He insists, words coming faster as his thoughts whirr around his head, quick and chaotic, jumping in front of each other with the haste of being exposed. “Ron’s right, the only other possibility is that he picks them off the streets, and no one who is careful enough to get away with that sort of thing is going to bother with a _pawn shop_. The antiques are the only possible connection.”

Kingsley’s tone is the fatigued, heavily exasperated tenor of a parent dealing with a very stubborn child, and it raises Harry’s hackles better than any taunting from his cousin ever managed.

“They all also owned a microwave, Potter. Should we be looking up brand and manufacturer to make sure the killer doesn’t work at an appliance store?” 

The captain is clearly awaiting a response, and Harry grinds his teeth. “No, but microwaves are common -”

He’s not given a chance to continue. “You can’t think that it’s reasonable to search these women’s apartments and pursue as lead anything they might have in common.” The captain shoots back. His tone doesn’t change, as steady and calm as they’ve all come to know, but there’s something about the tight set of his shoulders, something about the tension around his mouth -

Harry knows he’s on thin ice.

But he knows he’s right. He sees the links, even if they don’t. They think that the lockets are a gimmick, a signature, the flaunting of an arrogant psychopath intent on proclaiming his kills. _It’s only natural_ , he’d heard a couple of days before. _Serial killers often leave trinkets and signatures, the stranger the setting the more likely it’ll get him acclaim -_

Idiots, the lot of them.

The locket isn’t a _trinket_ , it’s the main piece of the composition.

It’s, perhaps - he hesitates to admit this, even to himself, but it’s perhaps what first caught his eye. The gleam of gold, so bright, shining starkly against the pallor of death.

They think that his person, whoever he is, is just another idiot, and Harry has never felt insult on behalf of another as strongly as he does now. To consider the absolute lack of evidence left at the sites, the difficulty of composing the scene in itself, the apparent randomness of the kills -

Except that, when cops pull up to search their houses or rooms or flats, there’s an old, grandfather clock in the living room. Except that one of them had a matching set of teacups, cracks mended and colours faded, looking well over 50 years old. Except that Warren had a terrifying collection of old, collectible dolls that were produced six decades ago and -

“You think I’m being stubborn.” Harry says because he can, because he _has_ to. Because every time he shoots his shot in this case, he hits the bullseye.

Because they still don’t believe him when he does.

Daphne Greengrass was found in an alley, killed through strangulation. The angry, thin bruises circling her neck, the chain marks clearly delineated in dark bruises on her skin, visible even in the pictures that Harry found in her case file. She was hung from a rackety set of emergency exit stairs, not from a tree, and the necklace she wore was made of plastic - cheap, brittle, and obviously unable to resist the sort of pressure that it would need to be put through if one were to use it to asphyxiate her.

And Harry _knows_ , no matter Ron’s quickly averted eyes or Kinglsey’s frustration -

That oddly shaped bruise, right under her collarbone. Almost as if, were someone to pin her down with their full weight, they might accidentally press the indents of a pendant against her skin with enough strength to bruise.

They’ve seen four of these lockets already. He’s stared at them for longer than he cares to admit, lost in thought and perusal, willing his eyes to find details and all the hidden secrets he had yet to unveil.

He knows that shape.

He’d know it anywhere.

Now, if only they’d _listen_ -

“You’re walking a fine line, Potter,” Kingsley says, voice low. It rings loudly in the space between them, the voice and chatter in the background oddly muted. “You’re a good detective, but you step one foot past that line and I won’t be sentimental about it.” He seems to ponder on his words, almost hesitant, but there’s a steely undercurrent to his voice as he continues, “Take the day off.”

Harry feels all his limbs lock into place, for a second, utterly still. He stares ahead, uncomprehendingly, unbelieving of what he’s just been told. Seeing no regret on Kingsley’s face, he turns to his colleagues, to his friends, to the kids he studied and graduated with, looking for any crumb of support he can possibly get -

and finds none.

Only Ron’s averted eyes.

It’s like the floor vanishes from below his feet, for a second. There’s a jerking sensation in his stomach, oddly weightless, oddly nauseous.

And then there’s anger.

“Fine.” He says, words clipped, and turns on his heel. He pays no heed to Ron’s weak protest, to the heavy sighs that echo around him.

He’s right.

And he’ll show them.

He roughly grabs his jacket from where it’s draped over the back of his chair. Pausing to rummage around his upper right drawer, his hand comes way grabbing a small black notebook. It’s filled to the brim with his personal notes and ramblings about the case.

Were anyone to find that notebook, they’d think he’s mad.

But he’s not.

He leaves the station without looking back, without even looking around. He stares straight ahead, speeding down the stairs and into the cold, brisk autumn air.

He could have turned left. He could have walked the entire length to his small flat, could have taken the time to let his mind wander over other, lighter matters, maybe call Hermione and plan a long overdue dinner. He could have opened the door to his flat, changed the water bowl outside his window for the stray cat that visits every so often, made himself some tea, curled in for a cozy day.

Instead, he hails a cab.

The driver starts making half hearted conversation, but after a string of monosyllabic answers, eventually tempers off into silence. Harry is left with his thoughts, left with gold and death floating in his mind as he watches the scenery pass them by.

It’s a dreary day. The clouds look mutinous and threatening overhead, casting the world in greying tones, and it doesn’t get better when they get to London. It becomes more crowded, the air floods with the speeding cars and hustle and bustle of large crowds moving in synchrony. There’s something vaguely claustrophobic about big cities, Harry’s always thought; about the clumps of bodies that move around as one, about the tall buildings overhead, about the smoke that clings to clothing and lungs like a parasite. It grows in him, that cloying, slowly building anxiety in the pit of his stomach.

*

She was beautiful and elegant, graceful to a fault. Fine hair, light blue eyes, every line of her body shaped into perfection.

He’s not one to easily fall prey to looks, but she’d nearly enamored him. Polite, with intelligence brimming behind her easy manner, lying beneath the self imposed layers of vanity that she chose to hide behind.

Daphne was a regular customer. A lover of antiques, of anything that resembled the old and traditional. Tom didn’t think much of her, not really, simply treated her with the sort of familiarity brought upon by regularity.

Until _that_ day, of course.

Until the day when she walked in, a golden chain around her neck, a golden pendant resting on her chest that he knew belonged to him.

It felt like a haze - like that day in Little Hangleton.

He hadn’t planned it, not really. He laid on his flattery a bit too thick, let his eyes linger on her delicate wrists and thin neck a bit too long. It wasn’t difficult, of course. He’s not unaware of his own effect on others.

She’d been easily persuaded into a walk, into a cup of tea. Happy to chatter on about her favourite pieces, whatever inane backstory justified her interest in the first place.

“I can’t help but notice,” Tom had interrupted, at a point, “That pendant that you’re wearing. It’s truly gorgeous. Is it an heirloom?”

A dusting of rose on her cheeks, a hint of a smile poking through, as she told him the story of a beggar woman that had sold the locket to her parents. A rather shameful affair, she’d said, in the hushed tones of one delighting over tragic gossip. Her parents had given the woman a sum, of course, but nearly nothing compared to what the locket was truly worth.

It had been nearly enough to make him falter.

But then -

“Can you believe it? Oh, it must have been a disgrace.” She’d confided in hushed tones, eyes sparkling with a mean, sharp sense of humor. “I mean, she must have been a drug addict or something of the sort. A parasite, really, living off others’ compassion and generosity. I’m rather sure of it. What other reason could she have had for parting with it, really?”

And that, well. That wouldn’t do.

So Tom had led her on for the entire afternoon. He’d talked her into reserving the evening _just for the two of them_ , bashfully asked for his name to be kept secret, lest it affect his employment. She’d looked at him through heavy-lidded eyes, smile coy and triumphant and curling around her pretty red mouth.

And then she’d looked at him through reddened eyes, thin, fragile veins bursting with pressure. She’d choked, pitifully, clawed at his unflinching grip. She’d struggled, slowly weakening limbs jerking every other way erratically.

He’d stared into her pretty blue eyes the entire time. Watched every desperate movement, every flutter of her eyelids, every tear that leaked through. Watched as, at least, the light left her. As her gaze became unseeing. His hands around her neck, her body cooling and lax, blooming with blues and purples and he’d felt - _alive_.

He’d held the locket in trembling hands. He’d gazed down at it, traced every dip and ridge with the pads of his fingers, softly, reverently. _Birthright_ , something in his mind had whispered, and his shaking ceased at once.

He’d strung her up on the set of emergency exit stairs. The adrenaline boost had made it as easy as Billy Stubbs’ pet rabbit had been, so many years before.

Tom had whistled as he left the alley, and laughed his way home, giddy and heady and flushed with excitement.

He’d laughed a couple of days later, too, as the cops responsible for tracing Daphne’s routine came barging through the shop’s door, notebook in hand, asking sloppy questions. They didn’t even glance in his direction. Burke didn’t think twice about his measly assistant.

The case remained unclosed, and he’d thought that would be it. He’d avenged himself and his mother, in every way he could conjure up. He already held the ring and the locket, and he had a scholarship to worry about, an internship - a bright future on the horizon. He was young, he was brilliant and full of promise, and it was time to focus on that.

But - he couldn’t. He’d wake up in the middle of the night, panting and shaking, his hands tingling with the memory of cold metal biting into his skin and life draining between his fingertips. He’d wake up thinking of the contrast of his own skin and the deep, red blood that sprayed from his father’s slit throat.

He’d wake up, shaking with something he knew he shouldn’t be feeling, with something he’d never thought he’d feel.

Satisfaction. Thrill.

He was helpless.

*

That feeling of dread doubles down as soon as Harry steps foot out of the cab. It’s the cold grip of _fear_ , yes, the fact that he can’t help but notice how the buildings around him seem to loom ever so threateningly, seem to _lean in_ , ever so slightly, the more he looks, but - it’s more than that.

It’s something he hasn’t let himself think much about. It builds from the tips of his fingers, curls and climbs up his arms in a tantalizing manner, buzzes under his skin.

It gets worse, as he walks into the dark maw of this little, cobbled alley; as he makes his way forwards, as he catalogues all the things he’s expecting to find.

There, three dented garbage bins. There, an off-colour brick standing out in an otherwise coherent wall. There, the wired fence blocking the alley.

There, the rackety, rusted set of emergency exit stairs that Daphne Greengrass was found hanging from only two months previous.

He stares at them, for a while. Hands in his pockets, posture relaxed, taking in slow, purposeful breaths.

 _Excitement_ is the word he does not dare utter, even in the privacy of his own mind. It’s _wrong_ , he knows. Part of him thinks that they’ll see it in his eyes if he acquiesces even if only to himself. He knows he should feel nothing but disgust, but _repulsion_ when he thinks of such horrendous deeds. These women are people, in their own right; people with fears and aspirations, with friends and families and dreams, and to have anything cut those lives short is nothing but tragic.

To have _anyone_ cut those lives short is nothing but condemnable.

But there’s something about it that _calls_ to him. The elaborate play, the flawless execution, the _thrill_ of the chase.

He doesn’t have James Potter’s laugh lines, but he does have his father’s innate flair for danger. He doesn’t have Lily Potter’s enthusiasm, but he does have her insatiable curiosity.

_(In every world, Harry will excel at finding the biggest spot of trouble available and sticking his nose in it.)_

And it’s that which he feels as he takes in a deep breath - his gaze stuck in the black, rusted metal of the stairs, the cold London air flowing into his lungs. The itch of this small alley, the walls closing in on him; the details of the casefile flashing through his mind, an odd sort of weightlessness coursing through him, like the second before a fall.

And then - a prickling in his neck. The instinct to duck, to vanish into the shadows.

He doesn’t. Harry remains rooted to the spot, shoulders loose and unmoving, the pit in his stomach growing into butterflies, the lightning under his skin buzzing with insistence. His heart pounds with _giddiness_ as he recognizes the feeling.

 _Someone is watching_.

*

Tom had lucked out with Lavender Brown. She wasn’t even one of his customers, he’d just caught her chatting with a friend about a beautiful tea set she’d spied on a storefront, so old and well cared for - 

Surely she thought it providence, that she’d brought up the topic right in the vicinity of someone who actually could get her a similar product. Surely she thought it luck that the stranger happened to be so kind too, and handsome to boot.

Alas, she wasn’t very lucky. Not at all.

But not right away. He’d butchered his family while drowning in red, he’d murdered Daphne while deafened to the world around him. He’d been overcome with emotion, cloaked in wrath, and he kept thinking that if it had felt _so good_ when he was so beside himself -

How would it feel if he were in control? 

So he’d read up on famous serial killers - no one would think it odd, after all, it is somewhat connected to his line of work - noticed their patterns and M.O.s, trinkets and phrasings, and he planned.

He’d considered killing differently. The thought made him feel lightheaded, giddy, aching with the need to hurt. To hear her scream and plead, to choke on her own panic and pain and blood -

It was tempting. 

But seeing the life bleed from Daphne’s eyes had been beautiful. Cathartic.

Exciting, knowing that he’d done with his bare hands.

He’d use proper rope to string her up this time, and he’d leave her spotless apart from that - after all, wouldn’t that be puzzling? A funny little piece to add to the mystery, to the mythos, of one who killed so brutally yet exhibited so much restraint?

He’d thought that would be it, plans and details all hashed out - and that’s when he’d found himself staring at his mother’s locket.

That deeply rooted shame reared its ugly head again, made itself starkly known against his ribs, in the rapid beating of his heart. He thought of this conceited girl, so self-satisfied in her mediocrity, and of his mother - a girl herself, really, if Morfin was to be believed - who’d never even had the chance to grow into herself.

Poetic, he’d thought. That the first time he’d escaped death’s cold embrace should be represented every time he wrought it himself.

The shop had no means for replicating jewelry, but he did have a contact in a museum where they often had to make replicas of priceless items from scratch. Barty was a funny sort, certainly, but he knew how to keep his mouth shut, and he owed Tom a favour.

It was time to collect.

*

Harry lingers around the site for a while, until he decides that whoever keeps _staring_ isn’t going to stop anytime soon. He tries his best to be subtle as he tilts his head to the side, shifts his weight, and turns around ever so slightly, but he can’t see anyone. There’s no one standing at the mouth of the alley or leaning against any wall, and he can’t look at the roofs or higher windows while remaining inconspicuous.

So he turns on his heel and starts to walk back. The alley seems to stretch on endlessly, casting shadows on his darkening path, closing around him - but he grits his teeth and breathes through his nose, and clings onto that buoyancy that comes with _trouble_.

He takes a deep, relieved breath as soon as his feet meet the main street again, but he doesn’t allow himself time to recover.

There’s a folded map in his pocket, in case he needs it. He’s circled all the places of interest he could conjure up: places of residence, crime scenes, last known locations, jobs or schools, and, of course, antique shops.

As luck would have it, there are three close enough by that he can visit them all today, by foot.

The weather is amenable, regardless of the grey clouds hanging overhead. Harry’s breath fogs in the air as he walks. The streets are welcoming, lively with people moving about in their day to day lives while not being overly crowded. The storefronts are clear and well presented, little chimes jingling as a customer walks in or out. There are orange, crinkly leaves on the ground, not yet damaged by rain.

It’s a pleasant, picturesque place, calm and peaceful. It would be even more so if only he could ignore the feeling of being _watched_.

As it is - Harry barely pays any mind to the leaves on the ground, takes no notice of whom he walks by. He checks windows and bars and coffee shops with outside seating in search of any attentive gazes, checks behind him whenever his path curves ever so slightly but - there’s no one.

He stops at a crosswalk and tightens his jacket against a sudden gust of wind.

Maybe he _is_ going mad.

*

Lavender died beautifully. Lavender died terribly, and that’s perhaps the best part.

There was a very mild sedative in her system, just enough to slow her down, to lower the chances of alerting a passerby.

It was exhilarating.

Her neck was a delicate, fragile thing in his grip. Her gloved hands clawed at his face and at his shoulders, a delicious _bite_ to her than he hadn’t anticipated, and he nearly blew his cover by breathing out a delighted laugh. As it was, he crouched over her hips, knees on the ground, and using his own legs to restrict her movement. Tom paid no heed to her wandering, panicked hands. All that mattered was the set of her mouth, how it gaped so delightfully, how her throat moved under his hands as she still tried to pull in more oxygen. Her face turned red, then slowly prune; her eyes wide open and pleading, tearing up, blood vessels popping just like Daphne and -

Before he knew it, her hands stopped their ceaseless ministrations and fell, heavily, to the floor. She stuttered out a last gasp, and then -

she was gone.

_*_

Harry ponders on the case as he walks. The scenery clearly isn’t enough to distract him from his ceaseless watcher, but there’s also no point in focusing on it if he can’t do anything about it.

Instead, he lets his thoughts wander, as they’re prone to do, to the Case.

He chuckles to himself, a barely there thing, as he thinks of the first body.

He and Ron are a bit too young to be Detectives, truth be told. They’ve made it to the position more out of sheer dumb luck and rather less out of true merit. Ron is a born strategist, great in a tight situation, and Harry’s instincts might be an unfortunate reminder of a less than stellar past, but they’re more than useful in his line of work. Combine that with their matching impulsiveness, how they enable each other’s bolder and stupider ideas, and it apparently results in a pair of detectives.

Or maybe the department was just understaffed.

It was certainly understaffed.

That was precisely why they were called in that morning. Everyone else was out or busy in their own assignments, and Kingsley had thought it a simple enough case. Simple enough for his two newest rookies.

“What have we got?” Ron asked, enthusiasm colouring his tone, and Harry couldn’t hold in his matching grin.

“We’ve got a _murder_.” He sing-sang, making Ron laugh.

“ _Sweet_. Give me details, come on Harry, don’t be like that.”

“Impatient, aren’t we? I’m getting there.” Harry cleared his throat, his voice dropping an octave into caricature. “Woman, in her early to mid-twenties. No signs of assault or robbery, the preliminary ME’s report says asphyxiation. She was found _hanging from a tree_.”

“Bloody hell,” Ron muttered, his grip on the wheel growing firmer. “That’s _weird_ , right? Oh, no.” He said, widening eyes darting Harry’s way. “You better not get all weird about this, okay, I remember how you were back at school, anytime you thought Malfoy was up to one of his shenanigans. Don’t get all weird on me, Harry, please.”

“Okay, fine.” Harry laughed, ignoring the slowly stirring interest he could already feel growing in his chest. He wet his lips, his eyes roving over his phone as he read the information again. “Fine, I won’t get _all weird_.”

It was only when they got to the scene and Harry first saw that thrice damned locket that the words sat on his tongue, heavy and riddled with guilt, tasting like ash.

Like a lie.

It was the theatrics of it, he knows, which first caught his interest. The locket may be offensive to his personal, discrete taste, but there was no denying its finery. The ostentation of it, gaudy and golden and shining brighter than anything else around. The thin links of the chain hanging around Brown’s neck like a mockery of the crass knot of rope, of the dark bruises. And the clothing, the way no seam was left unarranged or out of place; the curls of her hair hanging primly in their updo, it was -

“ _Morbid_.” Was the word Hermione used later that day when he went over to hers and Ron’s for dinner.

“ _Gross_.” Was the expression, accompanied by an expletive, that stumbled its way through Ron’s lips, when they got close enough to the body.

“ _Terrible_.” Was the muttered comment of the morning shift M.E as she examined the body, spoken in a discrete aside to the intern that usually covered the night shift.

 _Beautiful,_ was what nearly slipped past his lips as he took in that scene - and then every scene after that.

There was something wild about it all. Something angry, something happy, something that felt like bone deep familiarity.

*

It was better than he’d expected, watching the cops bustle around the case like particularly stupid insects.

They put up a board, tracked down every part of Brown’s life that they could find, scoured every inch of her apartment, and spoke to every single one of her friends. Tom held his breath when they approached the bubbly girl from the coffee shop, Parvati Patil, but she’d forgotten all about the mysterious stranger her friend had met. And Lavender had, apparently, done her very best to hide their _relationship_.

He’d been waiting, anxiously, patiently, for them to make the connection between this and the Greengrass case. Surely, they wouldn’t pass it as coincidence. Surely someone would think about it -

But no one did.

Tom found a new target. Pretty little thing called Demelza. Fancied herself a free spirit, wanted to see how much her mother’s old grandfather clock could be worth at an auction. He made sure she paid in cash and then immediately asked her out for dinner. It was a short-lived affair, a very lively weekend, but by God, she was a handful. She died the same way that she had lived - being as loud and as messy as she could possibly get away with.

The next one was plain as day. Sally-Anne Perks, with a shy dusting of freckles and an unassuming style. She wasn’t as feisty as Brown, as vicious as Daphne, not nearly as dramatic as Demelza, and her death was much more boring. He wasn’t pleased - and maybe that’s why he struck out earlier that fifth time.

His palms itched more often. He was a man possessed, and the police had no idea. They were all so woefully - hilariously - misguided.

Or so he’d thought.

_*_

The first place Harry visits is a pawnshop. He’s aware that it’s a long shot, and so he’s not particularly disappointed when it yields no results.

The second spot is a disappointment. He looked for places to sell, buy or trade antiques, and this quaint little fair popped up. But it isn’t quite what he is looking for - clothing and old vinyl might be appealing, but they certainly aren’t relevant to this case.

The sky is beginning to darken, ever so slightly, as he trudges his way up to the last item on his list. The flow of people on the street is, as the threatening sky, making itself into a nuisance. Employers clock out of their jobs, children make their way home from school and parents rush to pick them up. It’s unsettling, the way walking through large bodies of people always is. 

Harry couldn’t feel more relieved as he abandons the overbearing street and walks into the last establishment he’d decided to visit. A bell rings as he walks in, and rings again as he lets the door slam shut behind him. He allows himself a moment to collect his bearings, to settle back into his skin after such a turbulent walk, and busies himself with looking around.

It’s exactly what he’s looking for, he thinks, cheered on by the thought. The place is well illuminated, spacious. There are dark shelves pushed against the far back walls, filled to the brim with various items. A doll, a glass tray, an old gramophone, a collection of large, heavy books, intimidating in their dark bindings. And then, spread around the floor, bigger items; a water fountain, a vase, a rickety wooden worse that has certainly seen better days. The air is stuffy, dust and age flooding the space, and it feels appropriate here in a way it wouldn’t feel in any other store.

He makes his way to the counter. He’s emboldened, but reigning in his impulsivity. It doesn’t matter how much his heart screams at him that _this is the place_ ; even if it is, the last thing he wants is to behave suspiciously in any way, shape, or form. The best course of action is to present a character, a story; to give his suspect absolutely no warning, should he meet them without knowing.

There’s a cashier, standing with his back to the store. The man is tall, dark haired, and he somehow makes the menial uniform he wears look nothing short of regal. Harry feels his mouth dry as he takes in the sight - those shoulders, the lines of the man’s back.

Then he composes himself and rings the bell that sits on the counter.

The greeting doesn’t make its way past his lips. That fake name and story never see the light of day.

Because as the man turns around, Harry's gaze is drawn to the book he still holds in a poised grip, and it only takes a split second to realize -

he’d know those long, elegant fingers anywhere.

His eyes climb up, and up, and meet another pair - dark. Endless, beautiful dark eyes set in a sculptured, beautiful face, and slowly widening in surprise as they meet his own.

*

That young detective was either a problem or a delight.

He couldn’t quite decide, not yet.

Oh, how he longed to read all the thoughts Potter kept scribbling on the little notebook he kept around.

Potter himself grew more and more fascinating as the days went by, as the case remained unsolved. His redhead companion grew increasingly worried, and their captain did too. It takes Tom some time to figure out why, but he finally does.

It’s in that frantic scribbling, in the long nights spent staring at a case file everyone else has dismissed. In the reverent way Potter held the locket replicas, studying them with a keen eye and a careful hand. In the way that those green eyes shone, brighter than any gold could, as they laid once more on the mangled corpse of a new victim.

It seemed like he wasn’t the only one enjoying this game.

The thought was - _is_ \- all-consuming. Tom wasn’t one to throw himself in danger’s way, but he could recognize the thrill that comes with risk. 

Myrtle Warren was wholly unplanned. He literally snagged her off the street, resorted to a small charade of begging for a phone or a cab, laid on the compliments thick _\- and it actually worked._

_What a dumb girl._

After dropping off the body, he rushed into work. He didn’t leave himself a lot of time to take a thorough shower, put his clothes in the laundry to wash, and hide away all of his materials. He barely made it on time.

As soon as he stepped foot into the station, he was being turned away again and sent off to see to his own killing.

It was hilarious.

He drank it up, careful not to show any sort of interest or recognition, but Tom could _feel_ Potter’s eyes on him _._ There are no words to describe how it felt, the absolute joy that coursed through him when Potter reached through and grabbed the locket. There are no words to explain how Tom’s heart pounded loudly in his ears, how his knees trembled.

He wondered, briefly, if that was what a crush felt like.

 _It must,_ he decides, as he looks into wide green eyes _._ Potter is not meant to be here, he’s not meant to know or suspect or connect the dots so soon, but he _has._

What does that say of Tom himself. he wonders, that this doesn’t worry him at all? That he’s focused, instead, on Potter’s slightly parted mouth, enamoured by this far too clever, far too fascinated detective.

 _We must play,_ Tom thinks, delight stealing through him as he forces his expression into one of surprise. _Oh, Harry. There’s something you’re not saying, I know, there’s something you’re hiding behind those pretty green eyes. You simply must tell me._

_Let’s play, little -_

_*_

“Riddle.” The word leaves his lips in a rush of breath. His brain is still short-circuiting, synapses firing information faster than he can process, and Harry blinks. Looks at the man standing in front of him again, and feels his heart stutter over a beat, feels a rush of heat steal over his body at the face that stares back at him, at the shock of it all -

at the way his gut tells him that something here is _wrong_. 

“Tom Riddle.” He says, and his brain screams _danger_.

Oh, if only Harry had ever learnt to listen.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry doesn’t talk about the devious way Riddle smiled; about the intelligence brimming behind those dark eyes.  
> They’ll want to paint him a threat, he knows; a lunatic, someone prone to make mistakes. He knows he should talk about this, use this ephemeral willingness to mention every insight he has on this man, on this monster, that they’ve made their job to hunt.  
> He knows that, if he doesn’t, they’ll never see him coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao it only took like. almost two months, right? ;w; i hope you enjoy!!

“Tom Riddle.”

The way Tom’s name rolls off Potter’s tongue sends shivers down his spine; they’re delivered in a tone of raspy, winded shock. That the detective knows Tom’s last name is surprising, unacquainted as they are apart from brief exchanges over bloody offerings.

That he knows Tom’s _first_ name is rush.

He smiles, looking properly bewildered.

"Detective! Can’t say I expected to find you here.” Tom closes the shop’s record book, setting it on the counter and out of Potter’s sight. His hand brushes, lightly, against the cold metal of the dagger he’s taken to carrying with him. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

The young detective stares for a minute more. There’s a set to his jaw as he takes in his surroundings, eyes darting around in a flash. There’s no telling what’s going on in that clever little head of his, and Tom nearly startles when he finally clears his throat.

“Right. I share the sentiment.”

Tom’s smile turns self-deprecating. “Oh, I work here part-time. The internship is unpaid, and I do need to pay tuition somehow. An acquaintance knew someone who knew someone and, well. Here I am.”

Potter hums, and something about his stance shifts. Maybe it’s the way he leans his weight on his right leg; maybe it’s the way he sticks his hands in his pockets, limbs loose and languid. Maybe it’s the way those bright green eyes cease their quick wandering path to stare at Tom with an intensity he’s never been the target of.

 _Oh_ , he thinks, equal parts delight and terror. _Don’t tell me you’ve figured me out quite so fast._

“So, what can I help you with?” Tom repeats his earlier question, widening his smile ever so slightly.

“I was canvassing the area.” Potter answers and Tom blinks in confusion. 

His thoughts whirl away in confusion. He’s going over that sentence, a sense of bitter disappointment starting to sink in when he notices Harry’s smile.

It’s a barely-there thing. It’s a twist at the corner of his lips, a thing of secret and subtlety, and it might have gone unnoticed if it were anyone else.

But it isn’t anyone else. This is Harry Potter, this is Tom Riddle.

_(And in every life, they are meant to collide.)_

“Have you ever heard of Daphne Greengrass?” Harry asks, and Tom’s heart stutters to a stop.

“Certainly,” He promptly replies, mouth flying off on autopilot and barely taking notice of Potter’s slightly widening eyes. “We had a regular customer by that name. Dreadful business what happened to her. The police even came by to ask some questions, at the time.”

And they left with _nothing_ , Tom knows. He doubts his presence or existence was even kept on record, on the lines of bureaucratic nonsense he’s seen this young Detective gaze upon, day after day. He _knows_ he hasn’t left a crumble of evidence, a dusting of suspicion that this man, clever as he might be, could have picked up on.

He _knows_.

“Dreadful indeed.” Potter agrees. “She was killed in walking distance from this store.”

There’s nothing for it but to feign shock. That information had never been released to the public. “I never knew. I imagine she must have lived in the area?”

“Not really. That’s what makes it so curious.”

Harry takes half a step closer to the counter, elbows coming up to prop themselves up at the tabletop. It’s a thin, inconsequential wooden thing, the counter; they’re standing far closer than they’ve ever stood. Tom can do nothing but keep his breathing steady, but grip his dagger a little tighter; can do nothing but stare ahead into eyes that watch him far too knowingly.

For too _certain_ , for someone with so little proof.

“There’s no apparent connection between the victims of our most recent killing spree.” Potter comments, his hand gesturing as he speaks. The sudden shift in the conversation is meant to unbalance him, Tom knows; it’s meant to keep him guessing and wondering at how much the detective actually knows. He holds back his delighted smile. “I say apparent because of course there is one. But I’ll admit it isn’t obvious - in fact, it’s a bit of a reach. But it was Daphne who helped me figure it out.”

It lands on him, then, with absolute certainty.

Potter _knows_.

Someway, somehow, Potter knows.

Tom’s dwindling customer service smile vanishes, and it’s replaced by another - sharper, colder. A mask meant to intimidate.

“Is that so? I did not know that the murders were connected.”

“Is that so?” Potter parrots and Tom clenches his hidden fist. “No, most people don’t see it. But it’s there, plain as day. The M.O., the apparent randomness, the _brutality_ .” The word hangs in the space between them for a second, two. Potter licks at his lower lip, before continuing. “She had some bruising on her chest. And the funny thing is that they’re an _exact_ replica of the lockets. Those _funny_ little necklaces we keep finding.”

The derision that colours his tone is a shock. It’s unexpected, coming from one who has so often gazed upon those very same lockets with nothing short of _adoration_ . A wave of _red_ clouds his vision for a single second, and he can’t quite hold back his sneer.

It’s enough. Potter’s eyes shine with triumph and Tom realizes that he’s just been played.

It’s - exhilarating. This interaction has him nearly _trembling_ , nerves frayed and shaking with a dazzling mixture of delight and terror. His senses seem strangely heightened in his high strung state and he’s starkly aware of the cold metal biting into his hand, of the sound of his own breathing echoing in his ears, of the heat of the man standing in front of him - eyes bright, hair a mess, looking as wild and uncomposed as Tom feels.

The Detective leans forward, nearer and nearer until they’re close enough to share breath. Potter’s catches slightly, a dusting of pink high on his cheeks, catching Tom’s eye a second.

“I thought,” Potter says, voice low. “I thought that it _had_ to be connected to the antiques. It was the only thing that made sense. They shared no hobbies or social circles, didn’t reside or work in the same area - they didn’t even share commute routes. It’s likely that these women would have never even crossed paths. But they clearly crossed paths with _someone_. With someone they shouldn’t have.”

Their breaths mingle. Tom doesn’t move at all, makes no pretense of propriety, merely waits for Potter’s enrapturing monologue to continue.

“The clock, the dolls, the tea set. It all made sense in my head. So, I decided to start with Daphne. Everything about her felt _raw_ and unpracticed. A crime of passion, while everything else seemed meticulously and carefully planned.”

And here, he smiles. It’s such a jarring contrast from everything he’s shown so far, the note of _mischief_ , the hint of _daring_ , and oh, Tom has always enjoyed playing with the feistier ones -

“I didn’t come in here expecting to find _you_ .” Potter’s voice is conspiratorial, nearly playful, and Tom finds himself unwillingly caught. “I was actually going to _lie_ , can you believe it? But then, I found you.”

There’s an emphasis to the word, a cadence of wonder, and Tom’s stomach flips.

“There’s something about you. About the way you always act when we’re fresh on a crime scene, the way you _watch_ whenever we cross paths at the station, everything about this setup -”

Tom laughs. It’s a rich, pleasant sound, he knows. Jarring, certainly, for someone who feels so certain of his villainy.

Who _knows_ of his villainy.

“You think I did it,” He chuckles. They’re still standing frightfully close, gazes unwavering. Two predators, caught in a battle of wills. “A likely story. I have an internship and a part-time job. I’m short on time for sleeping and feeding myself, let alone taking the time to set up such an elaborate scheme. My ambitions don’t lie in a prison cell, Detective.” There’s a finality to his words, a statement of _truth_ that Potter must hear, and Tom can’t help himself as he adds, “ _Trust me_.”

There’s a moment of silence, a moment of _stillness_. The motes of dust in the air stop in their paths, the panels of wood and the glass on the windows cease their creaking.

It’s a moment, in the span of a breath, that stretches impossibly wide.

And then, Harry breaks it.

“Is that why you’ve been holding that knife in your hand?” He asks, and Tom’s heartbeat sounds louder in his ears.

“Maybe I’m just happy to see you.” He replies.

It startles a laugh out of Potter, and then Tom strikes.

Potter dodges, impressive reflexes snapping into motion even as the smile remains. His eyes spark with the challenge, and Tom feels that same heat ignite in his veins. Giving his adversary no chance to run, Tom vaults over the counter and blocks the exit. Potter stills for a split second, then his knees crouch, his arms come up protectively, and they’re off.

Tom is all speed; fast, darting movements and quick hits, dagger steady in his hand and nothing short of a credible threat. He’s learnt how to fight for survival - back at the Orphanage, back at school, and in the messy streets of London. There isn’t a second of his life that Tom Riddle hasn’t fought tooth and nail for, and it shows. He’s brutal and well aware of his own might.

His detective might have had professional training, but it seems to hinder rather than help. Potter’s quick too, ducking beneath swipes and darting between shelves, skipping over items spread out over the floor with a nimble and impressive awareness of his surroundings. It’s when his formal training takes over, when he tries to firm his feet and his shoulders and hit with his back that it gets sloppy - Tom blocks all of his hits, not afraid to cheat, and eventually, his knife scrapes flesh, leaving torn fabric and a dripping line of red on Potter’s forearm.

The other’s eyes widen in shock. He hesitates at the unexpected, and Tom is there to take advantage of it.

He grabs at Potter’s closest arm and pulls the other man closer.

In the same movement, he plunges the knife deep into his stomach.

It’s a moment of absolute silence.

It’s a moment of absolute beauty.

They’re pressed flush together. Potter’s neck is tilted back, looking up so that his gaze meets Tom’s once more. Mouth parted in shock, eyes wide in disbelief. Tom’s heart pounds, his skin buzzes with the adrenaline, with the thrill of it; every staggered breath presses them closer together.

He can’t stop the genuine grin that curls his lips. He doesn’t overthink as the hand that still holds his detective’s arm raises of its own accord to comb through strands of messy black hair. He twists the knife, slowly, enjoying every flinch and unsteady breath.

There’s a flash of admiration as Potter refuses to vocalize the pain he’s surely feeling.

And then, Tom steps away.

The blood starts pouring in earnest. Potter raises a shell shocked hand to his stomach before his knees buckle, and he falls to the floor.

He seems speechless, but that’s okay. Tom bends down to grab his chin, to tilt his head upwards. How delightful he looks like this; on his knees, limbs weak, lips trembling with the shock that’s slowly setting in.

The red - that beautiful, dark red dripping off him in rivulets.

Tom smiles and, on a whim - on an impulse, on a current of electricity that snaps his muscles into motion, he’s leaning forwards so that his lips graze against Potter’s.

It’s the softest, gentlest touch. A mockery of a caress.

Potter’s sharp intake of breath sounds pained, but he doesn’t move away. It’s unclear if he can’t, or if he won’t.

It doesn’t matter.

Tom steps back, but he doesn’t relinquish his firm hold on the other’s chin. Standing to his full height, Tom looks down over Harry’s straining form.

“Don’t disappoint me.” He says, and, as if on cue, Harry’s gaze starts to glaze over, to become unfocused. The blood loss, Tom reasons with a chuckle, and, at last, he lets Harry’s form crumple into a heap.

He dearly hopes that Harry makes it out of this.

He cleans the blood off the blade using the parts of Harry’s coat that are not yet soaked through, and then puts on his own long, black coat.

He leaves through the back door.

It’s time for a change of plans.

*

Harry’s world grows colder, slowly but surely, as the lifeforce bleeds out of him. He’s held up solely by Tom’s Riddle firm grip on his chin, by a spark of heat he’s loath to lose, by the soft press of the other’s lips on his own.

Shattering, blooming, coming undone, and making himself anew, all of it in the briefest of seconds.

But then, Tom Riddle lets him go.

His body crumbles into a heap. His chest stutters with every rattling breath. His vision grows darker at the edges, narrowing into pinpricks of soft light that, eventually, fade away too.

The last thing he remembers is a razor sharp smile and a warm, smooth voice, delivering the words in an amused tilt.

“ _Don’t disappoint me.”_

And then - he’s alone.

He’s alone in a body that is accustomed to struggling, to clawing its way through injury and disease. But the blood flows, sluggishly and true; the pain in his abdomen numbs into a nauseating ache; his thoughts flow slowly, aimlessly, dazedly.

And everything feels so, so cold…

*

Tom packs quickly and efficiently. His hands only falter when they hover over the rope and notes and the bottle of chloroform, indecision warring with caution, but the sight of blood still under his fingertips sends a bolt of heat through his body and makes that decision for him.

He’ll continue his little escapades whenever he can.

Harry’s crumbling body on his hands will satisfy him for the time being.

He leaves his dingy apartment without looking back, hair fashioned into a more conventional style than what he usually wears, long black coat flowing in his wake.

He’ll have to abandon his car eventually, he knows, but he still has time before they track him down. If Harry survives the wound - _Tom certainly hopes he does_ \- it will still take some time before he’s in any state to deliver any sort of testimony.

This is his last chance to grab some last minute supplies from the station.

He drives recklessly, maybe, speeding through intersections and red lights. His body is fidgety, restless, buzzing with blood-soaked electricity, burning with exhilaration. He feels unhinged, wild, _high_ ; he laughs in giggling bursts as he speeds past the city lights.

The M.E entrance to the station is all sterilized floors and fluorescent bright lights. There’s a stark feeling of unreality in his every move, as he dumps gauze and sealed syringes and bottles of whatever he thinks might be useful. As a last minute decision, he grabs a black beanie someone must have forgotten there and pulls it low over his face.

There is no one else around. There are barely any parked cars, no cops loitering around the parking lot. It’s like fate itself designed for him to escape, to run and hide and continue on his pursuit.

To shed this old skin and reinvent himself anew.

 _Tom Riddle_ , the memory sounds in his head as he gets into the car. It’s the breathiness of it, the shock, the _marvel_ that makes him still in his movements.

That makes his lips twitch upwards into a smile as he stares into the rearview mirror. That makes his hand rise of its own accord to brush against his mouth, to remember the heat and the softness of another’s.

He’s still smiling as he drives off into the night, Tom Riddle’s perfect record and perfect piss poor orphan story left behind in the dust.

It’s time to bloom.

*

When Harry wakes up, everything feels slow, and hazy, and dimmed down.

It starts as the barest flicker of consciousness, the spark of awareness. It spreads into the feeling of limbs, heavy and dormant. The relief of a deeper breath, the sleepily indignant acknowledgment of the light filtering through his heavy eyelids, offensively bright.

It’s the distant murmur of conversation, it’s the steady, digital beeping.

It’s a pronounced ache in his midsection; it’s the sudden flare of sharp _pain_ that makes itself known at his minute, almost unconscious shift.

The pained hiss that slips through his lips is unavoidable, as he’s harshly ground into sudden and clear awareness. The beeping noise quickens, and the low murmur that swayed through the air ceases abruptly.

Harry opens his eyes.

The ceiling above him is painted in an off-white colour, and it doesn’t look familiar. He has half a moment to process other relevant information - he’s laying on a bed, the comforting warmth and weight of sheets and blankets pulled up over his body - before his vision is obscured by two very blurry faces.

But it’s okay, that they’re blurry.

He’d know them anywhere and anyway.

“He’s awake!” Hermione’s voice sounds, wobbly, and high and ringing with _relief_. “Oh, Harry -”

“Nice of you to finally wake up, mate,” Ron says, cheery and a little choked up. “I was starting to get worried.”

“Oh, _Ronald -_ ”

Harry is smiling before he’s consciously aware of it, the familiar bickering overhead making him feel calmer and more relaxed.

“Where am I?” He interrupts, and his friends’ voices quiet down. “And where are my glasses?” He adds as an afterthought, blinking a slight burning away.

“Oh!” Hermione frets, and her blurry form vanishes momentarily.

Soon, his glasses are being carefully placed on his face. The sudden clarity, the briskness of his surroundings, takes a moment to process, but it isn’t long before he’s being treated to Ron’s bright flare of red hair, to Hermione’s dark brown mane falling over her shoulders in rebellious curls.

It isn’t long until he’s being treated to the ashen undertones of their skin, to the heavy bags under the gleaming eyes, to the wide, unbelieving smiles in their faces.

Hermione is the first to speak. Her hands find his in a solid, warm grip. “You gave us quite a fright, there.”

“I did?” Harry answers, slowly. His head feels fuzzy, thoughts heavy and sticky like dried caramel.

Ron’s laugh is a fragile thing. His breath hitches, like he’s about to sob.

“Yeah, mate. Stab wounds are pretty frightening.” 

_Stab wounds_ , he thinks, and his memories light up like billboards, like neon signs, rushing into the forefront of his mind at a dizzying speed. The argument, the crime scene, the shop -

A graceful grip. Tidy waves of dark hair framing a handsome, regal face.

Endless dark eyes.

“Riddle.” Harry breathes, and his friends still.

He jerks up, headless of the rapid, alarmed beeping of the machine; headless of the pain that flares, sharply in his midsection, sneaking tendrils of heat up his skin; headless of the alarmed cries of his two best friends, of their half-hearted attempts to push him back down.

It’s that more than anything - their concerned faces, the rush of memories, their hands on his shoulders. His thoughts snap into startling clarity and he feels it, slowly and then all of once; the familiar, bubbling heat of _rage_ climbing up his throat, the familiar bile of _betrayal_ pooling in his gut -

the familiar, smallest spark of _resentment_ , lodging painfully in his heart.

“I told you,” He says, and it’s like no sound that has ever left his mouth before. The words that slip through his lips are horrible in their candor. “I told you exactly what you needed to look for, all of you. I’ve been telling you the same fucking thing since the beginning of this case, and _none_ of you believed me,” He feels a sort of vicious satisfaction as Ron grows impossibly pale, freckles dark and stark against bloodless cheeks. The sight propels him further, sparks _righteousness_ across his chest and he says, “I guess all I had to do was _get fucking stabbed._ ”

There’s silence; there’s the chaotic beeping of the machine singing in tune with his racing heart, with his laboured, harsh breath.

Hermione’s hands cover her mouth, her eyes wide. Ron’s mouth thins into a line, guilt plastered in every inch of his body, and Harry smiles, sharp and terrible.

“Do you believe me _now_?”

But Ron’s floundering is interrupted by another, most unwelcome voice.

“That’s enough.”

Harry can’t hold in a laugh when he sees Kingsley standing at the door. The silence between them is loaded, tension thick enough to cut with a knife, and Harry refuses to be the one who breaks it.

He refuses to apologize for words he knows he’s entitled to.

“We’ll need your testimony,” The older man finally says. His voice is a deep baritone that he flings through the air with a humming cadence. Most people find it charming; Harry has grown to find it invasive. “If you’d like to give it now, I’m more than willing to take it.”

Harry doesn’t bite. “Did you get him?”

Kingsley jaw ticks. “No. By the time Weasley found you, Riddle was long gone.”

It stops him for a second. He hadn’t thought about that - about how he’d gotten from a cold, bloodied floor to clean hospital sheets, wounds evidently cared for.

His eyes find Ron’s pleading blue ones and, all of once, the fight drains all of him.

There’s only shame, clear and traitorous on his face. There’s only guilt, weighing on his heart like a chain.

“You found me?” Harry asks, and Ron clears his throat.

“Y-yeah. I followed you. After you left the station. It didn’t feel right to let you just _leave_ like that. I wanted to, I dunno, check on you,” His friend shrugs, and Harry’s guilt only grows heavier. “I ended up trailing you. You spent a whole lot of time at Borgin and Burkes, and I thought, ‘hey, maybe he’s found a lead’ but - it was too long. I went in, and you were just laying on the floor…”

 _I am a terrible person,_ Harry knows with bone-deep certainty. 

Kingsley steps in with a notebook and pen in hand. “You didn’t have any weapons.”

Harry shakes his hand minutely. “I didn’t expect to find him.”

He goes over the events with as much detail as he can possibly muster. It doesn’t feel like new information, like something he hasn’t said before, but Kingsley nods as he writes it down, his visage serious, _listening_ in a way he hadn’t before.

When Harry gets to the confrontation with Riddle, he falters. He remembers the tension sizzling between them, electric and all-consuming. He remembers their exaggerated proximity, the way the other’s eyes flew over his face with a sort of _hunger_ that had his stomach twisting in something that wasn’t exactly fear.

Harry doesn’t talk about any of that.

He doesn’t talk about the devious way Riddle smiled; about the intelligence brimming behind those dark eyes.

They’ll want to paint him a threat, he knows; a lunatic, someone prone to make mistakes. He knows he _should_ talk about this, use this ephemeral willingness to mention every insight he has on this man, on this _monster_ , that they’ve made their job to hunt.

He knows that, if he doesn’t, they’ll never see him coming.

*

Harry keeps quiet.

*

The flashes of vivid red against skin keep him stated for a number of weeks.

They’re challenging weeks; Tom Riddle will always be brilliant but he’ll never be _wise_ , and there’s nothing quite as unwise as abandoning your quite stable life without a backup plan.

He should have had a backup plan.

It’s a testament, old Dumbledore would have said, to his arrogance. Bright blue eyes watching Tom over half-moon, gold rimmed glasses; such a vivid colour, amiably twinkling for everyone - everyone, that is, but Tom.

Ever since the very first day, ever since Dumbledore was sent to the orphanage to recruit him for a scholarship, Mrs. Cole’s poisonous words hanging about his head like smoke, souring and clogging and twisting his perception of a pupil he had yet to meet. Tom remembers it well; the distrust sitting heavy at the corners of his eyes, the steely undertone to his words.

The disapproving twist of his mouth when Tom’s trophy collection came up.

Bullshit.

He puts the thoughts out of his mind; throws away the ruminations, the cold, shivering memories of cold, shivering times; keeps it all under lock and key and warms himself up with the fires of _vindication_ , for Dumbledore is _dead_ and Tom isn’t.

Tom is in the _papers_.

Tom is in obscure blogs and comment threads, complete strangers observing his deeds and analysing his progress, condemning and condoning his actions in equal measure.

Tom is on the soft graze of a pretty detective’s lips; on the delicate touch of his reverent hands; on the twisting and turning of his whip sharp mind.

On the rich, dark red that bled through his shirt, that dripped down his clothing, that pooled on the floor. On the metallic tang in the air, on the warmth on his fingertips -

The memory burns in his mind for weeks.

But then the scent of rust fades into unfamiliarity. The memory of those golden flakes in Harry’s green eyes starts to bleed together and blur at the edges -

It makes his fingers twitch.

And that won’t do at all.

Tom quickly finds someone new, and his name is _Theo_.

And he has the right shade of dark hair, the right porcelain skin, the right height and build. But he doesn’t have the _fire_ . He doesn’t have the light that shines through every wire thin crack of his crumbling mask, that blares bright and obvious to anyone willing to _look_ , that marks him so clearly and so beautifully as _something more_.

Theo doesn’t have that same _sick_ intensity in his too light, too dull, too _blue_ eyes.

Theo screams, and Tom can’t help but wonder, dreamily, what Harry might sound like when he screams. Theo gasps, broken and helpless and desperate, and Tom entertains a thousand fantasies of how he might get those sounds out of his favourite detective. 

Theo _begs_ , and Tom laughs as he swings the meat cleaver down with wild abandon, with pure and unbridled joy.

Harry would _never_ beg.

*

It’s on the very last day that it happens.

The phone rings just as Harry is lowering himself down on the couch, book in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. There’s still an aching soreness in his midsection, in the spot where a jagged scar cuts across his skin.

A memory eternalized.

The phone rings just as Harry is sighing in boundless frustration, in boredom and restlessness after the weeks of bed rest he’d been forced into, nearly _coerced_ into, after Kingsley and Hermione found out he’d meant to go back to his desk two weeks previous.

The phone rings just as Harry, itching for something to do, starts his last day of forced vacation.

He’s groaning, grumbling as he gets up.

He doesn’t even check the number.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Harry.”

The book falls from his grip and onto the floor with a _thud_.

It flashes through his mind in a second; a smile, a chuckle.

 _Don’t disappoint me_ , in a mock chiding tone -

_(a soft touch of another’s lips on his own)_

“Riddle,” Harry breathes into the receiver.

His heartbeat flutters like a hummingbird’s wings as the other hums appreciatively. He’s rooted to the spot, limbs firmly locked in place. He knows he should be _doing_ something - writing down the number, grabbing a notebook, at least jotting down his notes so that he can make his way to the station -

(- after all, they’ve uncovered _so little_ information so far -)

But he doesn’t. He stays, shock still, as adrenaline zaps its way through his limbs, fills his mind with a cool clarity that he hasn’t felt in weeks.

 _What’s wrong with me_.

Riddle’s voice sparks in the receiver, his smile clearly audible. “I’m glad to find you well. I read the medical report and things seemed a bit touch and go for a second there, didn’t they?”

 _You read the medical report?_ , should have been the question out of his mouth, as his brain immediately tried to make sense of a statement, to gather information he could later use. But, instead, heat in his voice, he says, “And whose fault is that?”

Riddle laughs. It’s still absurdly smooth, even through the grainy quality of the call. “Please don’t hold it against me. I did say I hoped you’d make it,”

He’s unhurried, languid. _Dangerous._

“Do try to see it from my point of view. There wasn’t much else I could have done, was there?”

Harry should just give him short, clipped answers. Lead him down a conversation path that would answer more questions.

“You could have turned yourself in.”

He shouldn’t be _entertained_. He shouldn’t be joining in the banter, responding in kind, mock understanding colouring his tone.

Riddle sounds amused. “Not an ideal scenario for me.”

It’s annoying, it’s terrible, _it’s a delight_ , and Harry clears his throat.

Right.

“Why are you calling me?”

“Heard you were going back to active duty tomorrow,” The other man answers, or doesn’t, and Harry can see his expression in his mind’s eye. “I can’t imagine how _boring_ these weeks must have been. I wanted to celebrate your swift return.”

There’s something in the cadence of those last words, something that twists through the syllables and makes his newly acquired scar ache with the certainty that something is dreadfully, terribly wrong.

His mouth works on autopilot as the hairs at the back of his neck stand upright. “So you decided to grace me with your presence? Why don’t you tell me where you’re staying, I can set up a date, bring some of my friends from work -”

“ _Nonsense_ , Harry,” Riddle nearly _purrs_ , and the way his voice curls around Harry’s name is - “I’m rather old fashioned, I’m afraid. Dinner first, at the very least. I merely wished to show you, ah, a token of my… appreciation.”

Harry’s mouth feels dry. "Appreciation? What for?”

“For your devotion.”

The response grounds him to halt. His stomach jolts with anticipation, with anxiety, with _dread_. “My -”

“Devotion,” Riddle interrupts. “Of course. Or did you think I didn’t see it, Harry? How long you spent looking at the lockets I left as an offering, how long you gazed at poor Daphne’s file, how you simply _lit up_ whenever you pulled up to a crime scene…”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His voice is trembling, his hand shakes next to his ears and it’s damning how Tom Riddle’s laughter still makes his heart skip a beat.

The walls are closing in around him. There are no sounds coming through the window, nothing but the grainy static and the voice that intercedes it. There’s nothing in the world but this phone call. Every atom in his body is buzzing with shame and electricity, with sensations he can’t name or place, and above it all - 

with _panic_.

It’s quite dreadful to feel so seen.

_(In every world, Harry will know Tom and Tom will know Harry more intrinsically than they’ll ever know anyone else._

_More intrinsically, certainly, than they’ll ever know themselves.)_

“Of course.” It’s a murmur against his ear. “Nevertheless, I decided to send you a little gift. It should be arriving, oh, quite soon.”

As if on cue, the doorbell rings.

Harry’s head snaps to the side, his unfocused gaze on the door to his flat. His breath comes harshly, pulled forth from his heaving chest by the spindly, grasping fingers of _fear_.

“Tom -” He says, urgent and angry and _helpless_ , the name slipping past unheeded through his lips.

There’s a chuckle from the other side. “I hope you enjoy it, darling.” 

“Wait -” 

The line goes dead.

He stares at the phone in his hand for a moment too long. The doorbell rings again.

He moves as if in a daze. His limbs feel jerky, movements unnatural.

The scar in his stomach _tingles_.

He leans heavily against the door, hand clutching the doorknob.

And then, muscles tightening and coiling and ready to bolt - he opens the door.

He’s unsure of what he was expecting, _(certainly not Tom Riddle himself standing at your doorstep, Harry, really)_ , but the small, cardboard package that rests innocently on his doormat wasn’t it.

He brings it inside, careful to glance around at the empty corridor before he leans down to grab it. It’s small and light. From within sounds the soft, blunt _thuds_ of objects rolling around as he walks, but he has no clue as to what it might be.

He knows, deep in his bones, that it’s nothing good.

He cuts the tape. He’s barely pulled up the flaps before he sees it, breath catching in his throat -

a glint of _gold_.

His hand shoots forward with unerring speed, closing around cold metal. The well-known indents press into the skin of his hand, his clenched fist clutching tightly enough to leave marks. Bringing it up to eye level, he lets the pendant fall, holding on to the chain with careful, gentle fingers.

A small piece of paper flutters to the ground as he does it. Harry bends down, grabs it, and, seeing the imprints of black ink, checks the other side.

In perfect, looping calligraphy, it reads:

_Sorry to indirectly put you on house arrest. I imagine you’re as bored as I am._

_In an attempt to fix that, I decided to give you a hand :)_

_-T. M. R_

Harry nearly balks at the _arrogance_ that screams from every word, at the _insolence_ that seeps through. At the assumption that he’s bored just because he can’t investigate a stupid murder case.

At the fact that Riddle is absurdly _right_.

“Is this the original, then?” Harry mutters, his gaze moving back to the locket still in his hand before he realizes that there’s a tugging feeling at the pit of his stomach.

Like he’s missing something.

He rereads the note and frowns. 

“ _I decided to give you a hand._ ” He repeats aloud. 

His confusion increases as his eyes rove over the lines again. Such odd phrasing, from someone who he knows to be so eloquent. Unless the locket is the original, unless it contains some important piece of evidence, there’s nothing about this that can constitute as _giving a hand_.

_Unless -_

_No_.

Hesitantly, he peers over the open package. Notices, for the first time, the smaller parcel contained within, brown paper neatly folded and tied together with a dark green bow.

Brown paper which, at one of the ends, is stained a deep, dark red.

Harry isn’t sure whether he’s laughing, gagging, or crying as he calls the station.

 _What a gift_ , he thinks, deliriously, as he firmly does not look at the table.

The brown wrapping paper covers the tabletop, stained with sludgy, dark blood.

Resting on the very center of it, there’s a well-manicured, human _hand_.

*

It’s only Hermione’s stern words and trembling mouth that keep him rooted, as promised, to his desk.

It’s only Kingsley’s clenched fists and too sharp eyes that keep his head down, as promised, focused solely on the boring paperwork that piles up on his desk.

It’s only Ron’s awkward shoulder pats and furrowed brows that keep his wandering hands, as promised, away from any notes he might find on the Case.

Each one of them worries in their own way. And it’s - reassuring, to a point, to feel that worry. To let it encapsulate him, surround him in a cocoon of warmth and safety. Kingsley worries for his employer and his force, certainly, but Harry doesn’t _(often)_ doubt his friends’ honest concern.

It’s reassuring, in a way.

It’s _suffocating,_ in another.

_(In another life, Harry builds comfort from company. Collects pockets of warmth, picks up strays, and makes them his own._

_In this life, Harry has grown up too wary, too disillusioned, too sharp. His edges cut and sting when they’re meant to hold and he doesn’t know, even after all these years, how to sit still and sit tight and accept concern._ )

It looms over him, taller and taller with every passing minute. It’s like there’s an invisible box around him that keeps _shrinking_ , constricting his movements and closing around him, making it hard to think, making it hard to _breathe_.

The bags under his eyes grow darker, born out of restless days and tossing and turning nights; his mood grows mercurial, his control grows _sloppy_ , and he’s biting out remarks and comments that he would never have allowed himself to voice. 

And he _knows_ what they mean, those glances that the others exchange.

He knows that they think the problem is the _case_ , the tension, the _fear_

Part of him, he thinks, knew that things would eventually come to be this way. 

He tells himself that it was that intuition, that _gut feeling_ , that made him, at the very last second - at the very last moment before Ron arrived at his apartment - grab the locket and hide it in his pocket.

That made his fingers tighten around the pendant when Kinglsey asked him _was that all_ ; that it was that certainty, that righteousness that sparked on his tongue as he lied _yes_.

He feels the cold metal biting against his skin, the chain digging at the back of his neck as he leans forward, as he wears it every day, as he _hides_ it every day. Its weight should be a near constant reminder of how _wrong_ this all is.

But it isn’t.

It just makes his blood pump faster; it makes his brain whirr with possibilities, keeps those dulcet tones on the phone at the forefront of his mouth, keeps his eyes sneaking back, unrepentant, to the picture of their latest victim, one _Theodore Nott_ , and cataloguing those interesting similarities everyone else has either ignored or looked over -

It just makes him look forward to _more_.

*

Tom calls Harry two more times after that memorable first.

He relishes the tension that carries through the detective’s tone, the way his composure erodes and decomposes as the conversation goes on - how his carefully worded replies brim with increasing urgency until his lips spill nothing but truth.

And it’s still there - that reluctant awe, that heart skipping enthusiasm.

He _understands_ , truly, the way he knows Harry’s colleagues and friends can’t. It’s plain to see - Tom drives to London when he’s bored, when he has the day off and no innocent to persuade onto his butchery. He stops his car next to Harry’s flat, more often than not, and sometimes hangs around a little coffee shop close enough to the station when he’s feeling particularly daring. 

It’s cute watching the circles beneath Harry’s eyes deepen and darken as his skin grows paler; watching the tight set of his mouth twitch into a sneer or a frown more often than not, watch the shock and outrage any of his apparent rough rebuttals or sharp retorts entices.

But there is no word to describe what Tom feels when, every once in a while, he catches a glimpse of gold in Harry’s hands, around Harry’s neck. It makes his heart flutter in his chest, warm and constricting and awful and wonderful and Tom doesn’t know whose heart he wants to carve out; his own, or Harry’s.

Both, he decides, as he watches his newest date through half-lidded eyes. Marietta wraps her plump, pink lips around a plastic straw with exaggerated purpose, her own eyes wide and pretend oblivious as they look back at him.

This, he will readily admit, is its own sort of fun. With Daphne, it had been an impulsive decision. But with Lavender and Demelza and Theo and Justin, he’d willfully _chosen_ to pursue them - to catch their eye with a charming half smile, to hold their attention with a warm hand resting at the small of their backs.

Sure, it’s not the thrill of holding someone’s life in the palms of his hands and _crushing_ it. It’s not the breathlessness of Harry’s wide green eyes on his, it’s not the daring adrenaline of sneaking into a police station after stabbing a detective.

But it’s the helplessness in their eyes, the guileless of their smiles; how a couple of sweet words and a pretty face can reduce these grown men and women into mimics of themselves. And then it stops being about that - about the power - and it starts being about the _shock_ . About the betrayal, about the panic, about the moments of pure, unadulterated _self-loathing_ when his poor lambs realize they’ve walked right into the wolf’s path.

Marietta is no different; she pleads and begs and sobs as the blood wells up, languid and unhurried; a dark, gorgeous trail of red to follow the tip of the knife he slowly drags over her body. The skin at her wrists and ankles chafes and bruises as she struggles against her bindings, and her limbs move in jerky, panicked motions. Tom holds the knife with a steady grip - too many years practicing on cadavers in morgues not to.

The blood comes fast, and oh, how it _flows_.

“Please,” She sobs. Her face is blotchy and red from her incessant cries; her beautiful ringlets of hair spread and out and frizzled. “Please let me go, I swear I won’t tell…Oh God, I swear I won’t tell the police, just please let me go…”

Her eyes are wide as she follows his slow approach. They’re green, he notices vaguely; a sea green, brimming with blueish grey at the edges.

 _Not the right green_ , flashes through his mind unprompted, and he feels the corners of his lips twitch upwards in a poor parody of his earlier charm. Her eyes widen further as she picks up on his change of mood, and her cries double in volume.

They’re quickly silenced.

And yet, as he sits on the cot where the remains of Marietta’s body still lie, as he holds his hand out and watches, with a clinical eye, how the rusty red of her dried blood sullies his skin, as he fiddles with the knife he’d used to finally slit her throat in one swift motion -

It doesn’t feel like it _used to_.

His hands twitch like they used to do when he’d gone too long without a kill. He runs a dirtied hand through the overgrown curls of his hair, straightening from his hunch and, as he does, his eyes catch on the phone resting oh so innocently on the table.

He picks it up without a thought, dialing the only number he’s bothered to save. He waits for a moment, two; his heartbeat counting in time with the dial tone. He holds his breath when it’s finally picked up, hands shaking with anticipation.

“Have you murdered someone else?” Sounds from the receiver, tone brisk and guarded, and if it were anyone else hearing it, it would have sounded like _loathing_.

But it _isn’t_ anyone else, and Tom laughs because he can almost see the scene in his mind’s eye - how Harry’s alertness bleeds over his countenance and turns it into a predator’s grace, as it muddles the guile of naiveté and righteousness he hides behind and screams out into the world what the man truly is.

 _Danger_.

Tom picks up the knife again with his free hand, twirling it between his fingers. “Perhaps.”

There’s a soft, exasperated sigh on the phone.

“I’m wondering if I should feel flattered,” Harry eventually says, after a pause has gone by. His tone is unusually dry, almost _wry_ , and Tom perks up in interest, letting the knife clatter down.

“How so?”

“Being the first person you call right out of a killing? Feels, well. _Important_ , wouldn’t you say?”

His detective _does_ sound wry, almost _flirty_. There’s a strange sort of manic energy lacing his words, electricity on his syllables and sending shivers down Tom’s spine. He remembers the last time he sneaked into London - bloodshot eyes and dark purple circles beneath them, an unhealthy pallor and a vicious smile.

The glint of gold, shining and sinful, around his throat.

Tom taps his lips with a finger and smiles.

“Feels _intimate_ , I’d say.” He answers and, without giving Harry the chance to reply, continues, “Much like that locket you’re wearing.”

There’s a note of stunned silence, and Tom laughs again.

“Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” He murmurs into his phone and is rewarded with a sharp intake of breath on the other end.

“Shut up.”

“You keep _saying_ that,” Tom chides. “As if it’s going to make anything _different_. As if it’ll keep your heart from beating faster every time you see a new picture go up on that funny little whiteboard of yours, as if it’ll keep your hands from touching the scar I left you, as if it’ll keep you from wearing my locket so prettily around your neck -”

“SHUT UP.”

There’s panting on the other end. Rustling, as if Harry is pacing or fidgeting.

Tom licks his lips, the metallic tang on his tongue, and speaks:

“Make me.”

*

“You’re suspended.” Kingsley grinds out, his voice an uncharacteristic growl. 

He clutches Harry’s notes in one hand, and the files he’d sneaked out of the file room in another. He’d been careless, he knows; the exhaustion creeping along his limbs and weighing down his eyelids also lowered his guard, leaving him open to blunders and missteps he would have never fallen prey to otherwise.

Leaving his open notebook on the top of his desk and the stolen files peeking from a half-shut drawer was just the most recent, and most dire, of those missteps. He only counts himself lucky that, amidst the chaos, his worst kept secret remained a secret, dangling around his neck, still tucked under his clothes.

Harry takes a deep breath. The monster sits in his chest, rumbling; the fiery, ugly rage that has engulfed him for the past couple of weeks threatening to cut loose.

“Sir,” He starts, a tremor in his tone from the effort of controlling his temper. “I can explain -”

“Explain how you _stole_ information you were strictly forbidden from accessing?” Kingsley interrupts, still not raising his voice, and Harry clenches his fists.

It’s unfortunate, he thinks, sourly, that this is the first time he _understands_ why Kingsley has such a reputation with criminals. His steady voice masks a frightening intensity; his bulk crowds the room, his presence undisputed, his gaze piercing. It makes Harry feel _trapped_ ; it makes him feel like a child, staring up at authority as his knees tremble, as his heartbeat quickens, as his stomach clenches in _fear -_

It’s unfortunate, he thinks sourly, almost despondent, because he _knows_ how he responds to _threats_.

It’s how he ends up storming out of the station, Kingsley’s words still ringing in his ears and a brand new bruise forming on his cheek.

 _I deserved it_ , he’ll think later, numbed out of his emotions, cocooned in a nest of blankets with a cup of tea in hand, watching the steam rise in soft, fleeting whisps.

 _Make me_ , he remembers now, and his blood ignites with _need_.

The next couple of hours go by in a haze. Going home and packing, nabbing the quickly scribbled address he’d managed to wrangle out of Barty Crouch when the man had been a little too slow delivering his latest package. Driving on autopilot, parking his car at the entrance of a graveyard and making the slow ascent up the hill until what, for all intents and purposes, looks like a decrepit, abandoned manor.

He lets himself in.

It’s a matter of waiting, really.

Tom Riddle may speak all he wants.

He never saw Harry coming.

*

Tom’s slow return to consciousness is accompanied by a pounding headache and the troubling realization that he is tied to a chair.

He blinks the blurriness out of his eyes but doesn’t move otherwise. Keeping his breathing slow and steady, he takes in as much as he can see without turning his head and realizes, to his relief and confusion, that he’s still in Riddle Manor. Nothing smells off, but he _does_ hear something odd.

A quick, repetitive tapping. Like someone bouncing their leg up and down. A nervous tic?

He doesn’t have time to ponder over it.

“I know you’re awake.”

The familiar voice washes over him, and it’s a _shock_.

It’s a _delight_.

Tom doesn’t bother hiding his grin as he hears his captor’s footsteps approaching from behind. He rolls his shoulders and, testing how tight the knots around his wrists are, leans backwards in his chair, for all intents and purposes perfectly at ease as Harry walks into his line of sight.

“Harry,” He greets, making no effort to hide the fondness that sneaks into his tone and smiling as Harry visibly flinches. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

The response is brusque. “Barty Crouch. He gave me your address.”

“Ah.” Disappointing, but not a threat. He does, however, have to talk himself out of this one before the rest of the police force arrives at his doorstep. “I am, ah, how did you say it last time? _Flattered_ , that you chose to come to visit me in person, rather than just sending a couple of patrol cars my way.” 

The thought occurs to him, and he stills. It’s written all over the tense lines of Harry’s body, and Tom’s lips stretch in a slow grin. “But I must admit, knocking suspects out and then tying them down in their residences doesn’t quite seem like typical police protocol.”

The dig works as intended. The set of Harry’s mouth tightens.

The thrill comes rushing back to him in a sudden wave. He feels the tender skin of his wrists protest as he shifts again, feels the beads of sweat forming on his temples; he’s overheated, restless, and he tosses his head back to get his overgrown curls out of his eyes.

He doesn’t miss how Harry’s own eyes follow the movement. It’s that same _intensity_ , that undiverting _attention,_ and Tom licks his lips.

“You haven’t told anyone,” Tom states, voicing his hunch, and Harry’s silence is admission enough.

Tom’s lips twitch upwards in a crooked smile. “Oh, my. This game of denial is really getting _old,_ Harry.”

He’s expecting an outburst, whether in the form of shouting, violence, or a complete emotional breakdown. He’s expecting the same beautiful anger he’s witnessed from afar.

He’s not expecting Harry’s deep breath. He’s not expecting the hand that raises to the detective’s neck and pulls out a thin golden chain. Tom can’t control the _hunger_ that consumes him in an almost violent swoop when he sees him, this man, this _monster_ in front of him, all dolled up in his pretty green eyes and Tom’s pretty golden locket, danger in every angle of his body and any attempts at normalcy in shambles at his feet.

 _He’s been made just for me_ , Tom thinks unbidden.

“Why the locket?”

The question is soft. Harry’s touch is as delicate as ever, his fingers curling over the pendant protectively.

It makes Tom’s chest ache in an unfamiliar way.

“It was my mother’s.” He says, truth spilling out before he’s even thought to lie. He sees Harry’s eyes widen minutely. “I grew up in an orphanage. It’s an heirloom, you see. I only found out about it when I came to this village and murdered the wealthy father that abandoned my pregnant mother and never made an effort to look for me.”

The words come almost without conscious thought. If anyone were to ask him before this moment, Tom would have said he’d take this story to his grave.

But now, looking into a gaze that gleams with an unfathomable, deep-seated understanding, he finds that he _wants_ to say it. He _wants_ to confess to every single one of his sins but not for absolution, no; that’s not what he seeks.

He seeks a confession of his own.

“I applied for the position in the shop after that,” He continues. “I figured that if there was any way I could find it, that was it. And, lo and behold, it walked right into the store. I didn’t even have to look for it.”

“Daphne,” Harry interrupts. He frowns to himself before his visage clears once more. “He abandoned her, you said. I imagine that if you ended up at an orphanage, your mom couldn’t have been very wealthy. Did she sell the necklace?”

It’s the lack of pity in his tone that makes Tom’s smile turn violent. “She spoke about how _embarrassing_ it must have been for a beggar like that to pawn off such a valuable trinket. What was the word - ah, yes. Daphne spoke of _parasites_.”

The other nods. Harry’s eyes shine brighter than he’s seen in weeks; his cheeks flush with what is clear _excitement_ and his entire being seems aglow.

Oh, what joy it is to watch his undoing.

“Your turn, detective.”

Harry takes an actual step back, his guard snapping back up, and Tom actually laughs. “Oh, come on, don’t be like that. It’s rather useless to hide from _me_ , don’t you think? Besides,” He tacks on, shrewdly. “It’s not like I’m going to tell anyone…”

Harry’s Adam’s apple bobs up and down twice before he shakes his head and steps towards Tom. Cajoling words die on his lips as Harry stops just shy of their knees touching, and bends forward, his hands coming to grip the back of Tom’s chair. Tom can feel the _heat_ of him from where he stands, caged between Harry’s arms, knees and shins less than an inch apart.

 _Close enough to kiss_ , Tom thinks dazedly, looking up until he’s lost in a world of _green_. If Harry reaches down or Tom lunges upwards -

_Definitely close enough to kill._

“My parents were killed in front of me when I was a child,” His detective says in a murmur and there’s _fire_ running through Tom’s veins. _Intimate_ , he’d said over the phone, and oh, it didn’t even compare. “I was raised by my aunt and uncle, and they hated me more than I think I could ever hate another person. My - _godfather_ found me, eventually, fancy that, and I eventually joined the force because my father did so too when he was my age. I figured,” Harry pauses, for a second, clearly grappling with the admission. “I figured it might make me feel closer to his memory.”

There’s a poignant pause.

“Did it?” Tom asks, his tone matching Harry’s and he watches, transfixed, as the other’s lips stretch into a wry smile.

“In the worst of ways,” He replies. “I don’t think I’ve been my own person since I got adopted. It’s been _James and Lily_ this, _James and Lily_ that. I look _just like my father_ ,” The words are dripping with bitterness and _yes_ , Tom wants to scream, _yes I understand -_ “And that’s, apparently, all that people feel the need to know about me.”

Tom wishes his wrists were free, for a second. He wants to reach up, to cup Harry’s cheek and drag him _closer_.

“I’d like to know,” He leans ever so slightly closer. He never averts his gaze from Harry’s. “ _Why_ you’re so invested in this case. In _me.”_

Harry’s laugh is a slow, disbelieving thing. “Pot, meet kettle. _I’m_ not the one who keeps calling.”

“Answer my question, and I’ll answer yours.”

They’re quiet for a long time. Harry worries his lip between his teeth, but they stand otherwise still.

“It was beautiful.” Leaves Harry’s mouth in a rush, and Tom can’t mask his shock. “Everything about it. It seemed so _raw_ , so _free_ . And the locket -” There’s conflict in his gaze, a twitch in his arm. “It was so specific. So _meticulous_ . I was in awe, I still am. The positioning and the _theatrics_ of it, sure, but the way the scene _screamed_ with emotion, I couldn’t -”

He closes his eyes, briefly. When he opens them again, he knocks Tom’s breath out.

“I couldn’t look away.”

He’s unsure who moves first.

Their lips meet once again, and this is nothing like the shy touch they shared while Harry bled out. This is _urgency_ in every movement, _violence_ and obsession in every bite, in every drop of blood swirling in their tongues, in every pitiful little whine that sounds from the back of their throats.

Harry’s hands find their way to Tom’s hair, somehow, and Tom groans as the other _pulls_ , tilting his head backwards for better access. Tom goes along with it, a bolt of heat curling low in his stomach at the twinge of pain, at the smooth and desperate slide of Harry’s lips against his own. It’s heat and wonder and fire and brimstone and for this brief, wonderful minute, there’s nothing but Harry’s mouth on his.

Nothing but this terrible, wonderful torture.

Harry pulls back first, but he doesn’t move _too_ far back. He rests his forehead against Tom’s, closes his eyes, licks his lips and Tom barely refrains from claiming those lips as his own once more.

“Your turn,” Harry says, nearly silent, and Tom closes his eyes as well.

“You figured it out,” He murmurs, aware of Harry’s sparking curiosity. “Every officer working on that case was scratching their head and shrugging their shoulders in bewilderment, and you came along and _saw_ it right away.” He chuckles. “And I think I’ve spoken at length about this. Everytime you arrived at a crime scene, you always got this look on your face, like you were _enraptured_.”

He lets the word hang overhead, aware of the tension lining every inch of Harry’s body. He opens his eyes, looks into horrified green, and grins.

“I knew you were just like me.”

The denial is swift. “I’m nothing like you.”

“How do you figure?”

“I haven’t killed anyone,” Is the quick response. “I’m not - _healthy_ , okay, I’m fucked up, I’ll admit that. I’d have to be, to, to be here and do any of this. But I’m not - I’m not like you. Daphne I get, but the rest? Brown and Warren and Nott and Clearwater - they didn’t do anything. They were innocents.”

He has a half prepared retort at the ready, but it dies on his lips as he processes the accusation. Tom frowns.

“Clearwater?” He enunciates, slowly, and Harry scoffs.

“Penelope Clearwater. They brought in her body around a week ago.” His tone turns snide. “I wasn’t allowed at the scene, of course, but I did think it was _sloppy_.”

“That’s not one of mine,” Tom replies immediately. “I remember every name I’ve ever killed. All the others from before we met, yes, those were mine. Nott, Finch-Fletchley, Boot, Edgecombe - all mine. I’ve never met _Clearwater_.”

They look at each other, wide eyed. Harry’s mouth opens and closes twice.

“You have no reason to lie.” He mutters, almost to himself, eyes roving over Tom’s face for something he doesn’t seem to find. “You’re admitting to everything, you have no reason to lie. Clearwater? Rosier? None of those are yours?”

Tom frowns. “No.”

Harry sways where he stands before shaking his head and clutching the back of Tom’s chair tighter.

His eyes meet Tom’s once again.

“Tom Riddle,” He says, tone like a _revelation_ , and Tom is so distracted that he nearly misses what comes next.

“I believe you have a copycat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a comment a day keeps the author validated <3
> 
> im on tumblr at cealesti.tumblr.com

**Author's Note:**

> Subscribe and ring the bell for notifications uwu


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